Daily Archives: June 26, 2009

Today I made soup for dinner.  It was “Fennel and Tomato Soup”, and was one I was looking forward to.  I like tomato soup and really like fennel, so I figured the combination would be a hit, and I wasn’t disappointed.  Plus, it was really simple to make, although I did manage to have a blow out near the end.   To start, I just took a bunch of fennel, a potato, and an onion, all chopped up, and cooked them down for awhile, then I added tomatoes and cooked it some more.

Once the tomatoes had cooked a bit, I added broth and let it simmer for about an hour.  During that time Julie grabbed some of her paprika cheddar biscuits out of the freezer and got those ready.

Once that was all cooked, I transferred the entire pot to the food processor to blend it.  This is predictably where the blow out occurred.  I didn’t realize that the food processor isn’t meant to be filled more than 60% or so or it starts to leak, so I ended up spilling some of the mixture out onto the counter and floor, all while the phone was ringing (shout out to Jim!).  It wasn’t that bad, and I managed to puree everything in two batches.  The end result was some pretty stinking good tomato soup.

Yesterday was a good food day.  Julie and I made root beer floats in the afternoon, and then we went out to eat with our friends Dan and Bethany Volz.  They have been watching our cats while we are away this summer and we took them out to Christian’s, one of our favorite restaurants.  We noticed on the menu that they had “veal sweetbreads” as the appetizer of the day, and we had a discussion about what part of the calf that actually is.  I was guessing it was an organ, like a liver, and Julie thought it was brains.  Turns out they are thymus glands, either in the throat or around the heart.  They came served in a creamy sauce, with peas and tomatoes

They had a really nice texture, with a mild veal flavor, not overpowering at all.  The texture was softer than chicken, but still kind of firm, and it went with the sauce and vegetables really well.  The fresh peas were definitely a hit with Julie who is not normally a pea eater (her view: “They squish like little brains”).  We also had an order of gnocchi, just in case the sweetbreads didn’t turn out

For dinner, Julie had the grouper special, which was grouper on a cauliflower and potato puree, covered in garlic mushrooms with a caramelized onion sauce.  She really liked it, to the point where she ate the entire thing and regretted it (a definite Gasper family tradition). I tried a piece (just the fish, no mushrooms), and it was really good.

I had the mahi mahi special, which was a filet of mahi mahi over pasta in an orange butter sauce, covered in 3 giant asparagus.  It also came with 3 sea scallops, which was a big part of my decision making process   It was really good.  I like “fruity” flavors, so the orange butter was definitely right up my alley.  It wasn’t too overpowering, but you could definitely taste the orange, and the fish and scallops were done perfectly.  The asparagus were huge and were perfectly cooked, nice and firm.

It was a typical, wildly successful trip to Christian’s, and we had good company, getting to hear about Bethany’s upcoming trip with the youth group to Iowa, among other things.